I'm a creature of habit. Once I find a way to do something, I keep on doing it that way forever. Case in point: Last week I tried to make some good crimps using my "squeeze-apart" wire strippers and my ratchet style crimpers. I was stripping multi-strand 16-gauge wire with very fine strands. The strippers were stripping off some of the wires - enough that the remaining strands didn't fill the red terminals that I use with 16-gauge wire. I had to go to the local "professional" electrical supplier (Codale) to get more terminals.

While I was waiting for the salesperson to bring out a box of terminals, an electrician sitting next to me at the counter, said that he had overheard my conversation about stripping/crimping woes. He asked if he could help. I described how I had stripped the wire. He stopped me right there and told another saiesperson to show me two Klein strippers, the 1009SEN for 22-10 gauge wire (gray handle with yellow ring) and the Klein 11057 for 32-20 gauge wire (blue handle with red ring). He grabbed a scrap of 14-gauge stranded wire from his tool pouch, used his gray-handled strippers and showed me how to strip wire. He chose the correct slot for the copper, closed down the handles to cut through the insulation and then slightly opened the handles and pushed the tool away from the wire with his thumb. No twisting, no real effort. Then he had me try. I was amazed. It worked. I bought both tools.

Next he told the salesperson to bring me the Klein 1005 (red handle) and the 1006 (black handle) crimpers. He said that the 1005 can be used for insulated and uninsulated terminals and the 1006 is advertised for uninsulated terminals only. Then he told me that using the uninsulated slot for red insulated terminals gives a perfect 20-year crimp. He demonstrated. He inserted a red terminal into the slot for uninsulated terminals with the split in the barrel facing the middle of the curve and the anvil portion of the tool facing the opposite side of the terminal. He slipped a scrap of 16-gauge wire into the terminal and made a perfect crimp. I bought both types of crimpers. (He mentioned that some of the people in his shop prefer the Channellock 909 over the Klein 1005, but Codale didn't have the Channellock 909 in stock.)

One last thing that he told we was to ALWAYS use a tiny drop of Ideal NOALOX on the stripped wire before putting it into the terminal. That, he said, would make the crimp a 20-year crimp without dissimilar metals attacking each other - which is not a real problem here in dry Utah. So, I bought a 4-oz bottle of NOALOX. He looked at me and told me that that small bottle would easily outlast me.

The last thing that he said was that awhile back, when he went into work, the foreman sat all of the electricians down and had them watch YouTube videos on stripping, crimping, pipe bending and a tutorial on Wago 221 Lever Nuts. He was there to pick up a case of Lever Nuts. He said that they use Lever Nuts instead of twist-on connectors for 10-gauge and smaller wire inside of junction boxes.

I went home, watched the YouTube videos that he suggested on stripping and crimping and also a video on the Wago Lever Nuts. Yes, I made another trip to Codale for some Lever Nuts. The choice was simple, 2.5mm terminal blocks cost $0.75 each. A 10-position jumper strip costs $7.00 (even though the strip can be cut apart to connect smaller groups of terminal blocks it still costs more than $0.40 for the Wago 2, 3, or 5 position Lever Nuts).